Monday, October 20, 2008

Putin, kindred spirit to Duhbya, only appears to be showing the Republican Party how to cheat the voters. In truth, the GOP has been doing this for many, many years, having learned how through absorption of the Dixiecrats, with their long experience suppressing black votes (though that's not how they referred to them).

The Rolling Stone article has this:

Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Republicans are happy to manufacture the consent of the governed out of whole cloth. Revolutions have been fought over this sort of abuse.